


Fingerprints

by thelongcon (rainer76)



Category: Homeland
Genre: F/M, response to photo prompt on lj
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-23
Updated: 2015-11-24
Packaged: 2018-05-02 23:47:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5268467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainer76/pseuds/thelongcon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chapter one: Written in response to the photo prompt on lj:  A lot can change in two years  (Q/C)<br/>Chapter two: Written in response to the 'frustration' prompt on lj: Three Conversations that never Happned  (quinn & Hussein, Dar & Saul, Quinn & Carrie:</p><p>“Right,” he says, with an odd inflection to his voice.  “Thanks…for coming to get me.”<br/>She can’t keep the flippancy in her voice - every tell-tale touch has already given her worry away: “I was in the neighbourhood; besides, Dar was concerned about you.”<br/>“He better have a fucking bagel.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Two years is a long time.  In two years anything can happen. Carrie can reconcile the duties of motherhood with the jagged edges of her own wants; where love and resentment smooth out.   There was a time when she looked at Franny – saw her blue eyes, red hair – and thought _this is enough, Brody lives on -_ there was a time when raising the child was the last thing Carrie wanted - it was enough; _they_ lived on - her part in the matter was _done_ and Franny was safe with other people, the world was safer if Carrie continued with her chosen profession.  The sense of resentment could twist inside of her, manifest into ugliness, but that’s not fair and not entirely accurate either.  Carrie can find a new boyfriend in two years, a new career, a new life in a country that knew what it was to rebuild itself from the ground up, to take the good parts, the bad, and mature with it.

Carrie can wake up in a cot, wrists looped through the bed-frame with her mind groggy, vision blurred, and feel relief course through her– _Quinn!_ – she can see the knife in his hands, the distance in his eyes, and feel trepidation bite at her heels  - _Quinn?_ – because a lot can alter in two years and Quinn feels wrong.  He’s so sharply drawn, a razor line in her groggy sight.

She wants to say you’re a coward. 

She wants to say you didn’t wait. 

Carrie wants to point out, loudly, Quinn’s a manipulative freak who tried to stack the deck in his own favour – really, waiting until her father’s funeral to drop that shit on her?  Not before, not giving her time afterward, the night of her dad’s funeral – but Quinn’s an assassin, Dar Adal’s operative, and playing fair has never been in his rulebook.  He didn’t get an immediate response, not the way he wanted. Quinn didn’t care to wait until her head was clear on the matter either, until the grief of her father’s passing, the questions, had settled. 

Two years.  He’s turmoil. Quinn’s war.  And for a split second, Carrie’s convinced he’ll follow the kill order. “No. No, Quinn, wait!”

“Carrie,” he says over the top of her, and the knife flickers in his hand.  Later, much later, she’ll regret the instant of doubt grievously, but for the moment, Carrie can’t get a read on Quinn at all.  “No.  Quinn, don’t,” she says, words blurring together.

Two long years – and some foundations don’t crumble at all.

Afterward, his blood will paint half of her face, Carrie’s wrists will blacken with ligature marks, so hard she pulled against the restraints he set, and her eyes keep straying to the knife. He put the same blade through Brody’s hand, part of her whispers - pinned Brody’s palm to the centre of an interrogation table - cored an apple, and with it, Quinn slices his own hand to the quick rather than hurt Carrie with the edge of it.

Her face feels tacky with dried blood.

Carrie carries – onward, through, questing forward – with the memory of his palm print ghosted upon her skin.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Three Conversations that never Happened:

 

1/.

“You are not a man of faith,” Hussein says.

Quinn knows enough to mimic the traditions, crosses his forehead when entering a pew in the Catholic church, can recite the Qur’an by entire passages, he feels the pinch of a needle thread through his shoulder wound and quirks an eyebrow at Hussein in response.  “What makes you say that?”

“A cinderblock and tied wrists,” Hussein says, dryly. “The way I found you. Most edicts frown upon suicide.”

“Not ISIS.”

“I do not honour them with the specific, there is nothing Islamic about them.  They are Daesh to our people.  And you – mercenary – are a man without belief.”  Hussein ties off the thread, carefully, his fingers are nimble; Hussein’s work will barely leave a scar.  Quinn leans backward on the cot, eyes scanning the other man’s face.

“Lack of belief isn’t a bad thing.  It just makes everyone equal.”  There’s a low pull of heat in his belly, the gut-shot aggravated after the street fight.  “If I hated Islam I’d have to hate the Catholic church. Or I’d have to hate every white male because some kid opened fire with an automatic after a girl turned him down.”  Quinn’s smile is more of a grimace.  “All of that hate gets exhausting in the end.  I’ll take the _tangible_ over faith. Keep your religious fantasies, just pay me the cash.”  Besides, it has nothing to do with religion.  Religion is a catch-phrase used to incite – the raised banner – but politics are the cogs behind the spin of a wheel, in the end, everything comes to politics, to the want of greed.

“Hate,” Hussein turns the word over slowly. “It’s a pity, for there is something wise to be found in every religion, I think.”

“And a whole lot of misdirection, too,” Quinn snorts. He stands up slowly, skin cool with drying sweat and his shirt bloody.  He pulls it on, trying not to tug at the wounds he bears, left arm first, then the right.  “Thank you,” he says, honestly.  “For everything.”

“I think there will be time, soon, when faith will serve you well.”

I looked for you, Quinn hears.  I looked for you everywhere. 

Two years and he can still hear Carrie’s voice over the phone, the drop in his own belly when she ran to another state. He figured he already knew what Carrie’s answer was going to be - how sharply she said no to Quinn’s offer to fly out and join her - he didn’t need to hear it verbalised after that. Hussein’s right, he has no faith.

“Well, I haven’t found it yet,” Quinn says, and slings the bag over his shoulder.

 

 

 

2/.

 

“She burned me.”

Dar looks up politely, his expression fixed to stillness.  Saul stands framed in his doorway, anger roiling in his eyes.  “Your prodigal daughter?”  Dar hazards.  He leans back in his chair, fingers laced across his stomach.  “Why so sure?”

“You saw her.”

“A figure of righteous fury, I admit.”

“She was station chief at Islamabad, of course they’re going to veto her opinion of me.”

“Ah.  Your bid for the directorship wasn’t successful then.”

“Fucking Carrie,” Saul spits, and drops into the opposite seat.

The vehemence is surprising, Dar notes. He grabs the whiskey from the bottom draw, considers the appropriateness of plastic cups - the props of civility for this conversation - then shrugs it away.   Dar unscrews the cap and drinks directly from the bottle.

“Give me that,” Saul demands, and takes the bottle as soon as Dar waves it at him.  “All my life…” Saul mutters, under his breath, eyes half lidded. “Every damn yard I worked for.”

Dar smiles.  He’s been told the expression doesn’t work well for him, the hint of mockery.  “You still hold a coveted position within the CIA, one of the highest in fact…  As do I.”

“A Jew and a Syrian walk into a bar,” Saul snaps. “It’s like the punch-line to a fucking bad joke.”  He plants the bottle down, hard enough to thud, in the centre of the desk.  “I fucking raised that kid.  How could she, Dar - ?”

Eventually, Dar offers: “Carrie resigned.” The evening light catches the whiskey bottle, dances amber and firelight across the mahogany of his desk. Saul blinks at him rapidly.  “Not like she had much choice.  As station chief, Islamabad was on her – resign like Lockheart did - or be fired for incompetence.”

“We don’t fire our own.”

“No.  We just bury them in a sub-basement, to lodge files for the rest of their natural born lives. She opted out.”

“Good,” Saul says, bitterly.  “ Good then…I’m so fucking done with Carrie.”

“I always said she wasn’t worth the gamble, old friend.”

Carrie thought any deal with Haqqani was an insult to the Americans lost in the embassy siege, a bargain with the devil that shouldn’t be entertained.

Saul was willing to overlook their fallen comrades if he could climb back into the driver’s chair.   He was pissed. Humiliated.  At a deeper level, Saul was convinced none of it would have happened if Lockheart hadn’t been elected director of the CIA, convinced under his own management, things would have weaved together very differently in Islamabad.  Saul wants back in the fight; he wants back in with a vengeance – and the executions that occurred meant nothing if Saul could land a spot at the table.  At the table, he could change things for the better. At the table, he could strike back. 

Dar can sympathise.  But he knows for a fact it wasn’t Carrie who burned Saul’s chances. His own prodigal child has never been fond of bullshit, Dar reasons.

“There a tape,” Quinn had said, “we were at the video-conference, we all saw it being made.”

“The tape is secure,” Dar had countered, “I have Haqqani’s word on the matter.  There’s only one copy.”

Quinn’s eyes don’t reflect the light. “Yeah?  I saw Haqqani’s word in action – when he put a knife through Fara’s spine.  His word doesn’t mean dick.  Not to Lockheart, who he promised it to, and not to Fara, who paid for it.”

“We need him, Quinn.  Saul’s an asset for the CIA.”

“Then he’s a compromised one.  And I won’t have him in the top spot. If it’s worth selling out the people who died in the embassy – in the name of _hiding a video_ – then who’s to say the video won’t re-emerge when Saul’s director, ten years from now?  Haqqani’s word means fuck all, Dar.  Saul wants back in because he can do a better job?  When does the line of reasoning stop?  When he’s _director_? These thirty odd lives don’t matter now in Islamabad, because I can do a better job in the agency – then in ten years these sixty lives don’t matter because I need to stay.” Quinn stops, his hands are half clenched into fists, his breathing elevated.  “You want me in Syria, Dar?  Fine, I’m a soldier, I’ll go.  But know I’m not comfortable with the idea of Saul as director.  Not by a long shot.”  

“Careful Quinn,” Dar said, coldly. “That’s my dearest friend.”

“And now he has something to hide.” Quinn straightened, he looked away, toward the truck, his jaw clenched.  “The thing about Haqqani is this: people only have short memories when it conveniences them.  You want my veto as chief of support: fuck no.”

Presently, Dar says: “Well, I always said your faith in Carrie was unfounded.”

“Yeah,” Saul says heavily.  “Should have listened to you, I guess.”

The thing about raising someone up, Dar reasons, is that they’re yours to protect, and Quinn has always been Dar’s guy first. “Europe is still a good deal.”

 

 

3/.

 

“Carrie,” he says.  His voice is shot: it’s gravel and whiskey, forty-eight hours of sleep deprivation and wounds too freshly carved onto his skin.   “I need your help.”.

Her fingers are on his face, over his torso, they skim the length of his arms, shy away from his flank - they find his thigh – they loop back to his wrist.  There’s a litany in her head, how often those words have been uttered, and his steadfast response each time.  Anything. Anything for you, Carrie, whatever you need.  “Up,” she responds, tersely.  “I’m not carrying your ass.”  She laces her fingers into his shirt, but stops short from pulling, Carrie has the feeling if she tugs the entire garment will tear and while the thought isn’t unappealing on one level, it’s not exactly helpful at present.  “Come on, Quinn.  Move it.”

“Jesus,” he gasps,  “you’re not tender at all.”  But he finds his feet, under her guidance he finds some semblance of balance, too.  “What the hell are you doing here?”

Carrie turns her head.  Quinn’s a solid weight against her side, arm thrown across Carrie’s shoulders, hip to hip, step to step.  A coin couldn’t slip between them.  They scuttle away from the body on the floor (his work) through the doorway and over the second corpse sprawled in the passageway (her work). “Finding you,” she says, distractedly, and juggles the mobile in her spare hand.  The faint illumination of the screen reads no signal. “Faster.”

“You should be in timbuk-fucking-tu by now.”

He sounds irate.

Incredulously, she says.  “Oh, in that case, wait right here while I go.” Paradoxically, Quinn’s grip tightens on her shoulder.  Her hand around his waist flexes until Carrie can grip his leather belt, holding tight. “Come on,” she urges. They turn left, left, right, stumble down dark passages until they find a wall marked Ausgang. Ahead, there’s a low roar, the buzzing of a thousand excited voices.

“We’re in Dortmund?” Quinn murmurs.

“Signal Iduna Park,” Carrie confirms, and then when he stumbles, she says softer.  “I’ve got you.”  In this light, she can’t tell what the damage is, more than the bullet wound she last saw Quinn with, he’s holding himself like a man ready to keel over.

“When’s kick off?”

“We’ve time.”

“Right,” he says, with an odd inflection to his voice. “Thanks…for coming to get me.”

She can’t keep the flippancy in her voice - every tell-tale touch has already given her worry away: “I was in the neighbourhood; besides, Dar was concerned about you.”

“He better have a fucking bagel.”

Carrie feels her mouth twitch.  She feels the adrenalin like a second life coursing through her.  “I love you,” she says. “You know that, right?” Carrie only has one scar on her body, high on her shoulder, Jonas used to rub his fingers against it as if trying to erase the point of impact – this velocity of force – a collision of duty and care bourn in the shell-casing of violence.  She would shiver every time Jonas touched it; the sensation muted, the itch of contact all wrong.

You know that right?  Unlike last time, she can’t keep the flippancy in her tone, her voice cracks, and Carrie can’t read Quinn’s expression in the darkness. They find the stairwell leading up.  She says, off hand: “Don’t run.”  Don’t run, don’t draw attention from the wrong kind of people.  Don’t run, not from the admission I made.  Intentionally, it could be both or either.

He laughs, a bare expulsion of breath. “It didn’t work so well the last time I tried.”

 


End file.
